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1995-01-03
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Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1993 10:17:51 -0600
From: mkapor@KEI.COM(Mitchell Kapor)
Subject: File 2--Another Stupid Rumor Bites the Dust
We have never contemplated removing CuD from the EFF ftp archive. We
have believed and continue to believe it is important to let all
voices be heard and we are happy to do what we can. It astounds me
and saddens me the extent to which unfounded rumor propagates on the
net. People need to have a little more faith, and, oh, maybe, ask us
what we're doing before jumping off in paranoid fantasies of EFF
selling-out.
Here are the facts. EFF's carriage of Phrack, not CuD, was costing us
$1,000 per month in additional transmission charges. After an internal
review, we decided we could not justify absorbing this rather
substantial expense for a single publication. Monthly downloads of
Phrack constituted 2 gigabytes or more. We have communicated with the
editor of Phrack who has accepted our decision and has arranged for an
alternate site.
An analysis of the past year of traffic on eff.org revealed an
interesting pattern. Roughly 40% of the total byte flow was due to a
single publication -- Phrack. Another 40% was due to all other FTP
traffic from CuD and other publications. The remaining 20% included
all of our email, FTP from the EFF archive, USEET, etc.
EFF contracted with UUNET to provide what is called low-volume T-1
service. That is, our instantaneous bandwidth to the net is a T-1,
which enables fast through-put, but the $1,000 per month we pay is
only intended to give us an average bandwidth of 128 kilobits. UUNET
measures the 5 minute average load in every segment and sends
statistics to its customers. Because of the growth of traffic over
the past year, EFF has been running at as much as twice our
contractual limit. UUNET has been billing us a surcharge of another
$1,000 per month and was about to permanently convert us to a full
T-1 customer at $2,000 per month. We felt we couldn't justify this
expense, as the $12,000 per year could pay for nearly half of a
full-time staff member, for instance.
The solution we chose was to make a decision that we will stop
carrying Phrack in the near future. This will enable us to continue
to provide all the rest of the services on our server for a good long
time without causing us more in the way of expenses.
People tend to think of FTP as a "free good". It isn't. Both storage
and transmission cost money. Maybe it's time Phrack started charging?
Mitch Kapor
Chairman, EFF
Mitchell Kapor, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Note permanent new email address for all correspondence as of 6/1/93
mkapor@kei.com
Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253